Websites and other facilities may be marketed in a variety of ways. One method of marketing is viral marketing, which uses electronic contacts such as chat rooms, emails and instant messages for example, or word of mouth and other avenues to effectively advertise the facility. Viral marketing has the potential to be inexpensive, as it may not require much of an advertising budget. Moreover, effective viral marketing may be swifter than any other marketing campaign available.
Measuring the impact of viral marketing can be difficult. The hallmark of a commercially viable website or other facility is a commercially self-sustaining business model. Based on relatively recent problems with various website-related businesses, determining early on what is a viable or self-sustaining business model can be helpful. Unfortunately, predicting the future is always inexact, and it can be woefully incorrect when applied to new forms of business, such as websites, or new methods of marketing, such as viral marketing.
While the ultimate measure of success is revenue which exceeds expenses by a desired margin, this cannot be instantly determined. Moreover, it may not be apparent until well after sunk costs are committed in an unrecoverable manner. Avoiding a large investment in an ultimately doomed enterprise is the goal of such prediction. Accordingly, it may be helpful to provide an early detection method for sustainability of a virally marketed facility. Moreover, it may be useful to measure parameters other than outright revenue to predict success. What parameters to measure, other than revenue or net profit, is not at all obvious. Similarly, how to use measured parameters to predict revenue or net profit, for example, may not be obvious.
Additionally, it may be useful to change a virally marketed facility prior to assuming the facility will not be profitable. Determining what to change and how to change it may be helpful in this regard. Moreover, determining how to implement changes may also be helpful.